o cross the threshold, and take a few steps through the
_close_, and he was on the road that ran along the sea-front of the
village. On the one side were the cottages, scattered and huddled--on
the other, the shore and ocean, wide outstretched. He would walk
straight across the road until he felt the sand under his feet; there
stand for a few moments facing the sea, and, with nostrils distended,
breathing deep breaths of the air from the north-east, then turn and
walk back to Meg Partan's kitchen and resume his ministration of light.
These his sallies were so frequent, and his absences so short, that a
more serene temper than hers might have been fretted by them. But there
was something about his look and behavior that, while it perplexed,
restrained her, and instead of breaking out upon him she eyed him
curiously. She had found that it would not do to stare at him. The
moment she began to do so he began to fidget, and turned his back to
her. It had made her lose her temper for a moment, and declare aloud as
her conviction that he was after all an impostor, and saw as well as any
of them.

"She has told you so, Mistress Partan, one hundred thousand times,"
replied Duncan with an odd smile; "and perhaps she will pe see a little
petter as any of you, no matter."

Thereupon she murmured to herself, "The cratur' 'ill be seein'
something!" and with mingled awe and curiosity sought to lay some
restraint upon her unwelcome observation of him.

Thus it went on the whole day, and as the evening approached he grew
still more excited. The sun went down and the twilight began, and as the
twilight deepened still his excitement grew. Straightway it seemed as if
the whole Seaton had come to share in it. Men and women were all out of
doors; and, late as it was when the sun set, to judge by the number of
bare legs and feet that trotted in and out with a little red flash, with
a dull patter-pat on earthen floor and hard road, and a scratching and
hustling among the pebbles, there could not have been one older than a
baby in bed; while of the babies even not a few were awake in their
mothers' arms, and out with them on the sea-front, where the men, with
their hands in their trouser-pockets, were lazily smoking pigtail in
short clay pipes with tin covers fastened to the stems by little chains,
and some of the women, in short blue petticoats and worsted stockings,
were doing the same. Some stood in their doors, talking with neighbors
sta